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Contributors
Stéphanie Balme is a research fellow at Sciences Po Paris and professor at the Centre for International Studies and Research (CERI) and the Paris School of International Affairs (PSIA), and the head of the “Law, Justice, and Society in China” program. Her research and teaching focuses include comparative constitutional law and rule of law developments. Her research applies to “emerging countries,” in particular China and post-socialist countries. She lived in mainland China and Hong Kong SAR, China for many years, working at Tsinghua University Law School as a delegate for the Civil Law Initiative and the Chinese University of Hong Kong. She has authored six books and a number of other academic publications and public policy papers in English, Chinese, and French. She also is a consultant on China for European and international organizations. Maurits Barendrecht is Academic Director at HiiL and has been a professor of private law at Tilburg University since 1992. He practiced law at a major Dutch law firm from 1982 to 1997. He studies dispute systems (e.g., legal procedures and informal dispute mechanisms) from an interdisciplinary perspective, and systematically looks for knowledge from other disciplines (e.g., economics and organization theory) that can be integrated with best practices in order to improve dispute systems for the people who rely on them. His research is conducted through the Tilburg Institute for Interdisciplinary Studies of Civil Law and Conflict Resolution Systems. Professor Barendrecht has led several large-scale innovation projects in the area of justice and governance that directly addressed urgent needs not being met through existing legal arrangements. These interactive research and development projects usually take place in cooperation with stakeholders such as client groups, ministries of justice, the judiciary, and the legal-services community. Renaud Beauchard, a French national and U.S. resident, is an attorney and legal consultant specializing in rule of law, justice reforms, and anti-corruption. A fellow of the Institut des Hautes Études sur la Justice in Paris and counsel for the law offices of Peter C. Hansen in Washington, D.C., Mr. Beauchard practiced law in France for six years as a litigator in a maritime and transportation law. More recently, he has worked as a consultant for the World Bank’s Office of Evaluation and Suspension and for the U.S. Millennium Challenge Corporation on its Access to Justice program in Benin. Mr. Beauchard has written several publications on topics as diverse as international assets recovery, corporate social responsibility, anti-corruption, and the evaluation of legal systems. He holds law degrees from Poitiers University (LL.M.), Cambridge University (LL.M.), and Tulane University Law School (J.D.), and has both practiced and taught law. Peter Blanck is University Professor at Syracuse University, Chairman of the Burton Blatt Institute, also at Syracuse University, and Honorary Professor, Centre for Disability Law and Policy, National University of Ireland, Galway. He has published widely on the Americans with Disabilities Act and related laws, serves as Chairman of the Global Universal Design Commission (GUDC), and has practiced law at Covington & Burling, where he served as